Being around just for the food has summed up my experience of Indian weddings. I am not complaining at all – the food is always incredible, and I’ll always have been fed extremely well! In the 2 months I’ve been here, I’ve been able to attend 2 weddings (the second one this being this weekend). Both of them have been completely spontaneous invitations, and through somewhat tenuous connections. And it’s always been about the food. I’ll show up, completely unannounced, be fed enormous quantities of delicious food, have a cursory meeting with the bride, and then make a quick exit. It feels incredibly rude, but appears to be normal here.
This weekend, we went to Kalimpong to meet up with everyone else. As usual, we went up to Darjeeling Friday evening, and then took the first jeep to Kalimpong in the morning, so arrived there at about 10. When we got there, we found that some of the other volunteers were going to a wedding that afternoon, and we were invited as well. Once again, we showed up to a wedding completely unannounced, inappropriately dressed (Alex - our connection to the entire event - looked absolutely incredible in her sari), in time for the meal and nothing else (and without a gift as well). But the wedding was large, and there was tonnes (and tonnes and tonnes) of food, which everyone was happy to share with a few random foreigners. I always feel really bad in these sorts of situations, like I’m taking advantage of others’ hospitality, but then I suppose Indian weddings have a reputation for being large for a reason.
Anyway, as well as enjoying delicious food, I also loved checking out what people were wearing. There were some incredible salwars and saris – I’ve decided I want an Indian wedding just so that everyone shows up dressed in saris. The men mostly wore western clothes, but a few were in traditional Lepcha dress. It had a really nice family feel to it, despite being such a big affair.
The whole weekend was lovely. It’s really good to be able to get out and see the others – as much as I love being here in Ghayabari, it’s important for sanity’s sake to be able to leave. The only negative experience was our journey back, which took us about 8 hours (instead of 4), thanks to our jeep breaking down and having to wait over an hour for another one to come pick us up. The next leg of the journey I spent in mild agony in the back of the jeep (our usual spot), but only half on the seat thanks to them squeezing 3 people in a spot for 2 (the other 2 being rather large men), so that I was rammed right up against a pole (which of course jabbed into my ribs every time we hit a rock or pothole).
- That's all I have time for I'm afraid. In Kurseong trying to figure out courses for next year (panic stations!), and am under a definite time limit (last bus goes in an hour and a half and I have a LOT of other things to do here). Gah!
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